November 12, 2014

Master Photographer Gordon Parks at the High Museum in Atlanta starting November, 15. Of all the "master" photographers I think I have always admired Gordon Parks the most. I admire him for his images but also for the tremendous bandwidth of talent he was able to command. Master Photographer, Feature Filmmaker, Painter, Actor... Most people don't dare to dream of being even one of those. He is an inspiration. If you are in Atlanta go see his Segregation work at the High

March 21, 2014

In January I went straight from the National Geographic photography seminar to Rio de Janeiro to shoot with Nokia Lumia Smartphones. This is a continuation of the project I started last year at the Grand Canyon. We are ticking off the seven wonders of the natural world. Five more to go...

The Lumias continue to impress me. They were good last summer but with the addition of RAW (DNG) capability they are really astounding. Never in my life did I think I would be making these kinds of images on a telephone.

March 04, 2014

The Long Shadow of Chernobyl culminates 20 years of coverage by National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig into the most authoritative photo book documenting the aftermath of the worst nuclear disaster to date. The book is being funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign to offset the cost of printing this high-quality photo book.

Ludwig's powerful images tell us tragic stories of the lives of the victims, the desolation of the Exclusion Zone, and the remnants of lives once lived in the now abandoned city of Pripyat. Inside the destroyed reactor #4, Ludwig takes us deeper into the belly of the beast than any Western documentary photographer. At the heart of the book are the people affected by the devastation - from the returnees who came back to the Exclusion Zone to live out their lives surrounded by desolation, to the children born with physical and mental disorders - from those suffering by the dramatic rise in cancers in the nuclear fallout areas, to those displaced permanently, haunted with the memories of the tragedy.

"I am driven by the duty to act in the name of these victims," says Ludwig, "to give them a voice through my pictures in this book. I have met many people who allowed me to expose their suffering in the hope of preventing tragedies like Chernobyl in the future."

An essay by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last head of state of the Soviet Union, reflects on the significance of the events at Chernobyl in the light of the political developments that would lead to the peaceful end of the Cold War.